Express citizenships

Following the opening of the players market to the entire European Sports Space (ESS), naturalization applications have multiplied at a rate of concern. No matter if one player ethnically or culturally doesn't fit with the typical population is expected for each country. The truth is that today nationalities are granted indiscriminately for strictly sports reasons (the chance to play in the same working conditions as ethnic nationals, such in the Euroleague as in the Eurobasket).

The pressure exists, and also the interest, equally divided both for clubs and for the national federations, who are reluctant to put a limit beyond the regulations of every National League (in the specific case of basketball, these are those who establish these standards, usually four eligible nationals, six from the ESS -all European countries plus Turkey and Israel-, and 2 out of it). Only victory is worth, and so to get it, they don’t skimp when it comes to efforts to import talent to play under their flag.

Even if they don’t feel the colors. Many of these professionals even don’t know how to speak the language of origin of his/her passports. For example, it’s hard to see "Georgians" to Melvin Sanders, Tyrone Ellis or Taurean Green, "Macedonians" to Jeremiah Massey or Bo McCalebb, "Montenegrian" to Omar Cook ...and "Russian" to Becky Hammon, a bleeding-case. That immortal picture, with her right hand in her heart when hearing the U.S. National Anthem –the "star spangled banner"- in the Beijing 2008 semifinals who faced USA and Russia each other; something unthinkable in the Cold War. However, it is becoming more and more common, with hundreds of passports issued every day for sports purposes. They are not native –it means, they haven't direct ancestry-; they also haven't spent resident time there; some of them even though can not locate its new nation in a map because their lack of knowledge of geography. Convenience marriages are also somehow presents in order to accelerate the paperwork times.

And here comes into play several questions. From one hand, the conditions about certain legal matters in several countries are often so much overridden, with little or no control. With a few thousand euros under the table the bureaucracy could be resolved within a couple of weeks,... if not a couple of hours. those athletes who become communitarians overnight rarely show interest in joining a different society -with all that implies: a different culture, customs and language??- in every sense beyond the duration of their careers.

From the other hand, we can question us if an extremely wide hiring process is beneficial or not in long-term. Many of these stats who take the decision of "assimilating" foreign labor have little or no development of young talents, little or no patience and are very keen for results. Thus, we can assure the following: there are strong interests behind over importing, such economical –show business, ticket and marketing revenues –as even political implications.

A legal framework in terms of sports labor law, always it’s decided by consensus among all parties. However, the limits of what is legal or not, exceeds, by far, the limits of ethics.